German Town Breaks Record for Largest Gathering of Smurfs

There's a world record to be held for almost anything and, for one German town, that world record may just be for the largest gathering of Surfs.

Yes, Smurfs, the loveable, blue-hued creatures with origins in Belgian comics and perhaps best known to some for the long-running The Smurfs animated series from the 1980s. According to NPR, nearly 3,000 people converged on Lauchringen, Germany as part of an event organized by the group Dä Traditionsverein with one goal in mind: break the world record for largest group of people dressed as Smurfs.

The group was pretty serious about breaking this record, too. There were strict rules that participants had to follow in order to be counted as dressing as a Smurf. A big one was that no non-blue skin could show, but there were also rules about which characters people could dress as. Popular Smurf characters, like Papa Smurf or Smurfette, were okay. Others, like evil wizard Gargamel, were not -- which makes sense as Gargamel isn't as Smurf. He just wants to eat them. Definitely not welcome at a big gathering.

After the event, the group posted that the final count at the gathering was 2,762, a number that the Record Institute for German verified. Guinness World Records hasn't yet weighed in, however, which means that until they do the record still belongs to a gathering in United Kingdom in 2009 which saw 2,510 people dress as Smurfs in 2009.

This recent attempt, which took place on Saturday, February 16, was also not Dä Traditionsverein's first attempt to break the record. The group had a first, unsuccessful attempt in 2016. It's also not the only Smurf-related record out there. Ripon, Wisconsin's Gerda Sheuers set the world record for largest collection of Smurf-themed memorabilia -- 6,320 items of it in all -- back in 2014.

The Smurfs were first created by Peyo, a Belgian cartoonist who introduced the small, blue, human-like characters who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest in 1958 as Les Schtroumpfs. There are over 100 Smurf characters, all with names based on adjectives that match up to their characteristics. The "Smurf" name is a Dutch translation of the French "schtroumpf", a word Peyo claimed to have invented when he forgot the world for "salt". The Smurfs hit the United States in 1981 in an animated cartoon from Hannah-Barbera with Peyo as supervisor. Since then, the characters have appeared in multiple movies, including 2011's The Smurfs, 2013's The Smurfs 2, and 2017's Smurfs: The Lost Village.

What do you think about this German town's attempt to set a new, Smurfy world record? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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